Salt and pepper are the spices of life. Salt is the king of spices for seasoning, while pepper follows in popularity. Salt and pepper complement one another and both are required to give flavour to life. The former can be taken to be emblematic of conceptual art, whereas the latter of traditional mimesis. Duchamp associates with the salt, and represents at once the Salt Seller and the Saltcellar. If for Duchamp salt was avant-garde conceptualism, pepper would suggest people’s attachement to conventional representation. Both are useful. The sad fact is that a traditional mindset resists progress and will not make an effort to appreciate the avant-garde, whereas the avant-gardist uses tradition as a springboard for advancement. This ignorance of the conservative public, which is ignorant of the cultural need to see the conceptual beyond the retinal, is a condition that needs to be recuperated for a balance to be achieved. This is why the salt-selling Duchamp remains as useful and necessary posthumously today as ever. And in this respect, Duchamp is evocative of Odysseus who disseminated salt to the saltless people.

London, 1 December 2016

Megakles Rogakos presented this essay at the Five-Way Portrait event that Charlotte Schepke, Director of the Large Glass gallery, London, held on 1 December 2016, by which to pay homage to Duchamp as well as celebrate the 5-year anniversary of the gallery. Other speakers were Bill Sherman, Clive Phillpot, Cornelia Parker and Alice Channer.